Ionized Mercury Gas in the Heated Shock Tube: The Measurement of Relaxation Times and Absolute Intensities

摘要

A heated shock tube was constructed as a new fluid-dynamical device, in order to study strong shocks in the mercury gas, to investigate the ionizational relaxation phenomenon, and to utilize the shock tube flow as a spectroscopic source. Extensive theoretical calculations of the Rankine-Hugoniot relation in mercury and mercury-neon mixtures were performed for a wide range of shock strengths, with various stages of ionization fully taken into account. A performance study of the heated shock tube was made. A novel observation of the reflected shock bifurcation in the monatomic gas of mercury was made, and a detailed quantitative analysis of bifurcated shocks is presented. The activation energy of ionization in shocked mercury gas is found to coincide with the resonance energy of neutral mercury in the temperature regime of 7,300 to 11,000K. The absolute gf-values were measured in the heated shock tube for 37 neutral mercury lines, using the method of curves of growth. (Author)